Encounters of the Mobile Geriatric Team

Abstract

The mobile teams were organized by the N.Y.S. Department of Mental Hygiene in 1968 (Cumming’s memo #68–27) to prevent inappropriate admission of elderly people over age 65 years to state hospitals. Admission guidelines were established around the concept of treatable, reversible conditions, and in-patient admission was to be considered only if documented psychiatric illness was present and could not be managed in another type of community setting. The Mobile Geriatric Teams were based at each state hospital and after twenty years in existence they still remain the touchstone of the present day admission policy for geriatric patients.